He was back on the station, walking through familiar corridors. Going home.

He opened the door. There were two people inside. They were the same person, he noticed, but he knew now that this was a dream and so it didn't seem strange to him.

Lera, his Lera, the woman he had left at home, stood in the doorway to the kitchen. She held a mug of something warm and steaming. She wore comfortable slippers and a short white bathrobe tied tightly closed. She smiled at him, but he was staring at the other woman in the room. This one sat on the sofa, her feet up on the table. She also smiled at him, but her smile was predatory. They had not met, but he knew who she was.

'Revan.'

'I can see how you made Admiral. Is the Fleet getting desperate these days, or do you have friends in high places?'

Carth had no quick or witty answer. He could only gape.

'I don't like being in your head any more than you like having me here, so I'll make this quick.' She drew her lightsaber and threw it. It spun end over end. All he could do was watch, knowing what would happen and knowing he was powerless to stop it.

Lera crumpled as the red blade scythed through her. The mug she held shattered and the spilt caff soaked into her slippers and robe.

'That felt good.' Revan retracted the blade. 'And frankly it's been long overdue.'

'You're dead,' said Carth. 'Killing her won't change that.'

'You don't understand the Force, and you certainly don't understand Lera, so shut up. You haven't noticed her mood swings, her a impulses? If she hasn't been spicing things up with you then she's having an affair. I knew you never paid attention to her any more.

'I'm not dead, you see. I can return. All she has to do is let me in. And she will. Oh, she will! She'll beg me, in the end.' Revan stalked forward, so that her nose was barely inches from his. Red and yellow lights flared in her eyes. Her lips pulled back, revealing sharp canines. She put her mouth close to his ear. Her hot breath tickled his neck as she whispered to him.

'I am her dark side. And I am coming back.'

XXX

His eyes were crusted closed with blood. He lifted a hand to wipe it away, but his shoulder screamed at him to stop and he obeyed. He tried the other arm. Better.

Scabbed blood scratched his eyeballs like trapped dust. The stinging made tears spring up, easing the pain somewhat. His eyes flickered reluctantly open.

He was staring at the ceiling. Red emergency bar lights ringed the wall, casting a baleful glow on the grey walls. With every second that passed he regained more consciousness but the pain grew worse. It didn't seem like a great trade-off.

His ringing ears told him that there were other people in the room with him. He could hear rasping breathing. Someone coughed agonisingly and was noisily sick. He felt nausea rise in his throat in response, but swallowed hard. He didn't think he could roll over in time to avoid drowning in it.

He lay there for a few more minutes, experimentally twitching his fingers and toes. Nothing seemed broken but his muscles felt as if they had been systematically torn. Breathing hurt. His nose and mouth felt inflamed and swollen. His head felt as though someone was playing synth-drums in it.

The longer he lay, the more aware he became that he ought to work out who was with him. He had people he was responsible for, though he couldn't recall who or how many, and they could be dying. And if it was an enemy, if he could get his hands on the bastards that had done this to them, no amount of pain was going to stop him. He shuffled upright on his elbows and looked around the room.

The first thing he saw was the shimmering red forcefield. Wherever they were, they were in a cell. Fourteen other men were in the cell with him, lying on benches or sprawled across the floor. They wore torn and burnt Republic uniforms. A quick glance at his own body showed he was dressed the same.

Admiral. Responsible for these others. Got to get up.

One step at a time. He sat up slowly, carefully putting his feet on the floor. One leg shrank back from the cold reflexively. Somewhere he had lost a boot. He rested his bare foot on top of the other to spare it the cold floor.

Some of the others were showing signs of stirring now. A man opposite opened his eyes and grinned at him.

'You look like rancor spew, Onasi.' His voice was croaky.

'I have felt better,' he rasped in return. A name popped into his head. Rohin. This man was a friend as well as a colleague. 'What happened?'

'They boarded us. Gas grenades. Everything's hazy. Maybe a side effect.'

Carth nodded, and Rohin fell silent.

Gradually all the men woke. Carth felt well enough to try to stand and eased himself up, holding the wall for support. He edged over to the forcefield, trying to see into the corridor beyond. It was empty.

'Any room service in this place?' someone asked behind him.

'Where's everybody else?' asked Rohin.

Uncomfortable silence settled between them. They were all thinking the same thing but none of them would voice it. Maybe we're all that's left.

Carth knew he couldn't let them think about this. Their morale was low enough already. 'We should piece together what happened,' he said. 'Anything anyone can remember about our attackers might be useful.'

'They shot us from orbit with a… well, sir, I don't know what it was.' Carth didn't know the man's name, but the blue stripe on his ruined uniform marked him as a technician. 'Some sort of ion beam. It crippled us instantly. All the power systems went off.'

'That's right,' said someone else. 'The internal doors sealed shut.'

'Good job, too, or we'd have been sucked out when all the airlocks opened,' Rohin added.

'We were falling towards the planet.' This speaker wore the uniform of a fighter pilot and was clearly the youngest of the assembled men. He looked like he only had to shave once a month.

Fighter pilot… Carth felt as if he had been stabbed. How could he have forgotten? Dustil! He was with Dolvenna's wing!

The men were in full flow now and he let them continue. If one of them had noticed what happened to the other wing, they would say. They shouldn't confuse the facts by reciting them out of order.

'They boarded us. Quickly, so the ships must have come from the planet, because the sensors showed nothing before they died.'

'They had some sort of device that they used to locally restore power to open the doors,' added someone else.

'They used blasters. But they were set to stun.' A few faces lightened at this. If the enemy had wanted prisoners, then there would be more Republic personnel somewhere.

'And those grenades.' They all fell silent as they remembered the choking clouds of green gas that had been their last sight before waking up here.

'Did anyone see the other fleet?' asked Carth, unable to restrain himself any longer.

'Dolvenna flew in behind us,' said Rohin. 'I saw him from my bridge. He got caught too.'

Carth tried not to think about the personal implications here.

'Stupid bastard,' said one of the marines, with feeling. 'If you can't trust an Admiral to follow his own bloody orders, who can you trust? Why didn't he get clear?'

'Trying to push his nose further up the CCC's arse,' said someone. The men snickered.

'That's enough,' said Carth, not letting on that they were only saying what he had been thinking. It wasn't appropriate for him to undermine a fellow senior officer. Not aloud, anyway. Besides which, if Dolvenna had been there then Carth would have been first in line to strangle him, undermining or not. There was no hope that he would return with reinforcements if he had been caught too.

'We need to conserve our strength. We need to find out a bit about whoever's holding us here, and find out their weaknesses. But until we see them, all we can do is wait.'

'Anyone got a smoke?' asked the grim marine.

'You're supposed to be giving up, Fray,' said another marine from the floor. He hadn't spoken so far.

Fray scowled. 'You sound like my wife, Hinter.'

Carth sat down again. There was nothing to do but wait.

XXX

It was hard to tell how much time had passed, but it felt like hours later that the forcefield flickered out of existence. The men exchanged glances. Was it a trap?

Carth shrugged. There was only one way to find out. He stood and walked out into the corridor. The men followed, the able supporting the injured where necessary.

Carth looked down the corridor. For a hundred metres in each direction the walls were lined with doorways. Out of each one came Republic soldiers, men and women in similar states to his cellmates. They looked confused.

Before Carth could start thinking about issuing orders, speakers in the wall crackled. 'Proceed in the direction indicated by the lights on the wall for food. When the alarm sounds, return to your cells. Disobedience will be punished.' The voice was computerised, female and supposed to be calming. But in their circumstances it sounded sinister and inhuman.

The lights in the wall began pulsing toward one end of the corridor. They began to walk down towards it. After a long time locked in their cells, the offer of food was a strong lure.

The corridor opened out onto a refectory. Machines in the wall dispensed some unidentifiable slop onto reconstituted paper plates. Spoons were provided, but no knives or forks that the prisoners could use as weapons.

Carth did a quick estimate on the number of people here. Judging from the number of cells and the number of people each contained, there were about seven hundred people here. That was barely a tenth of the number that had left Narula.

Despite the long odds, he scanned the sea of faces for Dustil.

'Where's Dolvenna?' someone nearby asked.

'Not here.'

Carth wondered the same thing. He didn't think that all the survivors were here. He had no evidence to say so, but he had a feeling, and he had learned to trust them over the years.

'Everybody listen up.' His best commanding voice rang out through the hall. The disciplined soldiers shut up sharply.

'We need to find out as much as we can about this place. I expect we'll get sent back to our cells soon. When we do, I want a tech in each cell, checking for any weaknesses. Removable panels, conduits, that sort of thing. Have we got any medics?'

Several hands were raised. 'Gather the badly wounded together. I appreciate this isn't a top quality medlab, but do your best. If anybody's got any medical supplies on them, hand them over to the medics. And somebody try to get a look at the far door before we get locked up again. It looks like that's the only way out.

'Now eat up. It might not be very appetising but it's no worse than protein packs.'

The assembled soldiers chuckled at his weak joke.

Someone sat down beside Carth. He recognised him as Lieutenant Tarrant, the head technician from the Sojourn. 'Don't look up, Admiral, and keep your voice down. There are several units in the ceiling that are of Republic manufacture. They're spy units. We're being watched.'

'It makes sense. Get word around quietly to watch what we say.' It wouldn't do to talk about Republic secrets if their captors were watching.

'Yes sir.' Tarrant took his tray to the next table. He spoke in low tones, and seconds later someone from the other end of the table got up and moved to the next one. The process was repeated around the room.

XXX

The lights in the cell dulled.

'Guess they want us to sleep then.' Captain Juin of the Razorback stretched herself out on a hard bench.

Carth had gathered all the captains in their cellblock into one cell for the night to question them about what they had seen during the battle. But they had seen no more than his original cellmates. By knocking out all the systems the technology-dependent crews had been rendered blind.

All around the room the officers lay down.

Carth lay awake a while in the semi darkness. He hadn't thought about Lera all day and now felt vaguely guilty about it. It wouldn't do to worry about her, he told himself. She was safe back on the base, with people to protect her if it came to it. The people around him were his priority. They needed leadership and organisation, and he wouldn't be found wanting.

He slept, and didn't dream.